During my time in undergrad, I had the opportunity to be a part of a very unique project between SIUE and the Illinois State Police. In the fall of 2025, I was allowed to intern at the Illinois State Police’s Division of Criminal Investigations Zone 6 under their Cold Case collaboration with SIUE. At Zone 6 criminal justice students work directly with ISP investigators to review unsolved homicide cases and identify opportunities for renewed investigative activity. I’m greatly thankful for being able to participate in this project because unlike most criminal justice students who learn their knowledge from a classroom, I was able to look at real and active cases from an investigator’s perspective.
From my time as a Cold Case intern, the tasks I performed while reviewing unsolved homicide cases helped me gain inside knowledge on:
- Evidence Management
- Understanding the investigative process from a law enforcement agency perspective
- The collaborative process of a criminal investigation
- The harsh realities of criminal investigations
- The advancement of forensic technology and how it can be used to help law enforcement
At the end of my Fall 2025 internship, I was invited to return to Cold Case in May of 2026 for a year-long term as the student coordinator of Cold Case collaboration. In this role I took on a leadership position of being the on-site help and main communication line between student interns and ISP investigators. I was responsible for gathering various documents that would be in a case file, organizing them, and assigning them to interns for a semester. During a semester, interns would look to me to help breakdown case information, locate documents, and other management tasks. My position as the student coordinator improved my skills in file organization, professional communication, attention to details, and leadership.
